


Dark Wings, Dark Words

by thegracious



Series: The Raven King [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bran is the eldest Stark, Canon Disabled Character, Gen, King!Bran
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-28
Updated: 2015-05-28
Packaged: 2018-04-01 12:13:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4019353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegracious/pseuds/thegracious
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Do you know why they call me the Raven King?" Bran asked Lord Walder Frey. A raven sat perched on his shoulder, still as a statue.</p><p>Until it opened its beak, and croaked, "Traitor, traitor."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dark Wings, Dark Words

It was difficult to help Lord Stark with his armor. Lord Stark - _King Bran, now_ , Olyvar reminded himself - could not move half his body, and so it fell to Olyvar to wrestle the King's dead limbs into warm leathers and protective steel. Deadened they may be, but wounds on King Bran's legs still bled. Like as not as he was to notice wounds to his legs, there was a very real possibility that his wounds would fester.        

Difficult it might have been to dress King Bran in his armor, and although the king himself had protested, the lords of the north refused anything less than the best protection for their vulnerable crippled king. They called him many things in the south, and most of them unpleasant - Bran the Broken, the Sorcerer King, Lord Skinchanger, King of Birdshit and Wolfbitches for the crude. But the Northmen and the Riverlanders loved their Raven King, the King in the North and theTrident. They would do anything to keep him safe, and if that meant that the king's squire needed to dress the king in his armor, then so it would be.

Olyvar didn't mind. King Bran was very kind, despite his sinister reputation in the South. Every morning, when Olyvar came to the king's tent at dawn, King Bran would be lying insensate on his furs, no doubt wearing the skin of one of his ravens and watching the camp from above. Summer, huge and intimidating, would be curled up to the king's left, watching Olyvar with suspicious eyes. Summer never made a move against Olyvar while he was dressing the king, even if the king was absent from his own body. And King Bran was absent more often than not. "No use wasting time when there are other things to be done," he'd said to Olyvar when Olyvar had asked.  

At first Olyvar had thought it a show of trust, and Olyvar had fallen into a deep and abiding panic over his unworthiness - until he realized that the moment the thought of harming the king passed through his mind, Summer would maul him to pieces.The thought, strangely, reassured Olyvar.

This morning, Olyvar worked efficiently: stripping the king of his night clothes ("Everyone in Winterfell has seen me undressed in one way or another," King Bran had laughed the first time Olyvar had to undress him, red-faced), then the simple grey leathers to go under his mail. King Bran returned just as Olyvar was drawing a white tunic with a direwolf sigil over his head, and a raven flew into his tent and perched on a side table.

"I'll take the letter myself, Olyvar, but please bring me the raven," King Bran said tightly. That was not a good sign - the king was little given to nervousness, a man who had defied Tywin Lannister with nothing but placidity on his features. His Grace read the letter, face growing blanker and blanker as he finished, and rolled up the letter as Olyvar finished donning his boots.

"Was it bad news, Your Grace?" Olyvar asked timidly. The king started, eyes focusing on Olyvar, and suddenly Olyvar felt nervous under his penetrating gaze. They said down south that King Bran could tell a man's thoughts from a look, that a man's thoughts were no longer his own. Fanciful stories, of course - the king himself had scoffed it off when Olyvar had told him of the rumors. But still, when he was the only focus of that gaze, Olyvar could admit that there was some cause for the rumors.

The king blinked when Olyvar started to fidget, and said, "No, just some surprising news. But still one that needs my attention.  Summon the lords to council, there is much we need to discuss. And call Hodor to bring me to the council's tent."

Olyvar nodded, and made to leave, but His Grace interrupted. "And Olyvar? Make sure that it is your father who comes to the council. It is a matter that requires his close personal attention." There was something hard in his eyes as he spoke. Olyvar had never been afraid of King Bran, for all his titles, but today a chill ran down Olyvar's spine.

Olyvar wondered at the letter as he left the tent to search for Hodor, wondered at what could have surprised the king so much and to inspire so much anger. The king was hardly ever surprised by anything. Northmen claimed he had the greensight, and so could see past, present, and future. The letter must have been about something so irregular and unthinkable, and Olyvar shuddered to think of what it might have been about.

-

Jon Snow liked to roam around the camp whenever he had the time to spare, watching his brother's army go about their business off the battlefield. There were the squires and stable hands feeding horses and caring for their tackle, blacksmiths hammering out dents in armor and fixing broken swords, watching soldiers mill around the kitchen's tents. Flags fluttered in the wind, and the smell of fresh bread and stews constantly came from the kitchens, and Jon and Ghost would find a good vantage point and settle there with his own meals until Bran sent a raven for him. It was a good way to avoid Lady Catelyn.

This time Jon had managed to get his hands on an apple, and Ghost was crunching on the bones of - _something_ , Jon supposed, but couldn't find the stomach to find out. The camp was quiet, although already busy just a few hours after dawn. Bran had given him a small company of warriors to fight with. Highborn, the lot of them, and although none spoke against Jon outright, he could feel their distance, their confusion and the offense they took at being put under the command of the king's bastard brother.

Smalljon was the friendliest, although he looked at Jon and laughed. "I think I'll call you Smaller Jon," he'd roared, slapping Jon across the back. Dacey Mormont had shrugged, and got on with her business. Later she told him that she could sympathize. The men treated her differently too, the only woman in their company. Owen Norrey was taciturn and silent, but he was so with everyone in their company and Jon chose to take no offense. The others however - Jon could sometimes feel them talking about him behind his back, and sometimes when he and Ghost came upon them in the evenings, they'd break off their conversations and glance guiltily at each other.

He had tried asking Bran about why he'd chosen Jon to lead this company of lordlings, but both of them turned awkward and tongue-tied on the subject of Bran's inability to lead his men into battle. Jon still remembered the look on Bran's face the night when the Greatjon had spoken out against him in the Great Hall of Winterfell. "Like I'd take orders from a crippled half-man who can't even swing a sword," he had sneered, and Summer chewed off two of his fingers. Jon thought Bran looked every inch a lord as he sat there in his wheeled chair, covered in furs and perfectly calm, when every one of the lords were on their feet in panic, watching the Greatjon staunch the blood flowing from the stumps of his fingers. "Crippled I may be, but wits are sharp as any blade. As are Summer's teeth," Bran had replied, and from then on even the most belligerent of the Northern lords were convinced that Bran's accident hadn't dulled the wolfsblood, that fierceness of the Starks.

But that night, Jon remembered seeing his brother stare hatefully at his useless legs, face as twisted in its hate as his legs were in their deformity.  Bran had been tall at seven, tall and slender like the Tullys, and he and Jon would get into fights over who would get taller first. He had been a budding swordsman, and Ser Rodrik had often spoke of Bran's naturally quick footwork, no doubt enhanced by all the climbing.  Bran was the one always outside, running in the courtyards, climbing all the trees in the godswood, and Jon had been the quiet boy who'd preferred his rooms to the grounds.

The accident that crippled him took that from him, and while the years had lengthened his body, shaped his face and changed his voice, his legs remained shriveled and atrophied, pale and lifeless. Bran had changed in those days after he woke, withdrawing to himself when he'd once been the boy to drag Jon out of his brooding, becoming taciturn and short when he'd once been sweet and patient. And it was _hard_ , Jon remembered, to be at the training yards and looking up to see Bran at a window, bitterness on his face, sometimes rage. It was the days of blankness that scared him most, those days when Bran would sit listlessly by the window and refuse to talk, sometimes for days.

It had taken them years to get back to the closeness they had share as boys. Jon was drowning in guilt for Bran's accident - _it should have been you_ , the ghosts of his regrets accused, and in the bitterness at the wake of Lady Catelyn's grief and rage at her husband's bastard, the bastard that had let her boy get crippled for the rest of his life. _It should have been you_ , she had accused him one night when little Jon had tried to sneak into Bran's room in the month when his brother lay sleeping.

Bran never spoke of it to Jon - or anyone else, as far as Jon knew- but Jon was well aware that his brother resented him too. Resented that Jon was whole and free to run and climb, resented that Jon would learn to ride and fight with swords and spears and axes, all those things that Bran had wanted to do when they were young. He resented that Jon had to sleep in his rooms, because Bran needed someone to watch him at night in case he needed to be brought to the privy or wanted water that he couldn't reach. But Jon also knew that Bran needed him as much as Bran resented him, because Jon did all the things Bran couldn't, like reach for books on shelves across the room, or pick up a quill Bran had dropped. He needed Jon to tell him about the training-at-arms that Bran would never receive, needed to have Jon scale walls or trees to look into places Bran wanted to see but couldn't get to.

It took them years before Bran stopped hating himself for his lameness, and yet that night at Winterfell, Jon realized that Bran had never stopped. "He has a point," Bran had said dully. "What kind of lord couldn't lead his armies into battle? What kind of son can't take to the field to rescue his father and sisters?"

Jon hadn't known what to say, so he let Bran cry and rage and scream at him, and after he brought Bran a glass of water and a washcloth to wipe his face of the tears. The rage over, Bran had slumped against Jon, still staring at his legs, and they had been sitting in silence for more than half an hour when Bran had said, "You'll ride into battle for me? Be my sworn sword, the fist of Winterfell? I won't have anyone except you."

And there he was, commander to Bran's eighteen thousand-strong army of Northmen, even as Edmure Tully glared at him across the map tables at war councils, even as the Riverlanders whispered among themselves about "Jon Snow, the king's bastard brother, they say the king wargs into his body for battle".

That had been another awkward encounter with Bran, with the King in the North stuttering at his bastard brother that he would never do that to him, and his bastard brother awkwardly offering his body if he needed to warg into another man. Both were flustered and embarrassed, but when Jon offered, Bran had risen to a lordly rage and flatly refused. "I won't take your body away from you, Jon. I might have asked you to be my sworn sword, but I don't need to be in your skin for that."

"You'll never need it either," was Jon's equally sincere reply. Since then they refused to talk about the arrangement any further, only accepting it as necessary for the war but otherwise refusing to acknowledge it. Jon rode into war with Ghost at his side, and sometimes Bran-in-Summer would be there as well, but often times it was the ravens that served as Bran's eyes on the battlefield. They served as his mouthpiece as well, sometimes delivering letters from Bran, but as Bran's skills as a warg increased, he was able to use ravens to talk to Jon and the other commanders on the battlefield, even for short messages like "Tywin to your left" or "we have Jaimie" when the Kingslayer was captured.

Today, Jon was driven to his perch with Ghost after waking. Yesterday had been stressful, the Dustins in his company had been muttering against him again, and Smalljon had gotten drunk and kept trying to get Jon to bed a whore, even after Jon repeatedly told him he wasn't interested. Dacey had left when the men started talking about all the women they had bedded, and Jon had followed after Smalljon was so deep in his cups he outright asked Jon if his manhood was an even smaller Jon. His men would think him a bore when they woke this morning, Jon knew, but drunken carousing still did not appeal to Jon.

He sat there, eating his apple, and was throwing crumbs leftover from his bread to some pigeons when one of Bran's ravens landed on a tree behind him. The raven opened its beak and cried, "Traitor! Traitor!"

Jon was on his feet and running to the camp in seconds.

 


End file.
